honey

I never thought much about honey.  We have all been careless about food until we have a nephew who's allergic to dairy products, or learn about a new harmful pesticide, hormone, genetic modifiers , etc. etc. etc.   Then we experiment with organic, and raw foods, and paleo diets, and gluten free, and less sugar and so on and so on.

But honey?  How could you mess up honey?

Well, there's this whole world of bees I didn't not know, and I'm not going to take the time to research - rather I will just pass on the stories I've been told.  

Tolga says the American honey is so cheap probably because they feed the bees sugar.  Not just sugar, high fructose corn syrup.  

The honey here is supposedly much more naturally harvested - and the from chunky honey bits, to honeycomb, and even pollen - its all sold for hefty prices depending on the quality and how the bees were fed.

Baba used to raise bees too.  Where the bees feed becomes crucial to their honey product.  And in the mountains there are some dangerous flowers that in turn make some dangerous honey.  Baba likes to tell the story about eating a spoonful of honey from  some bees and passing out for a full day.  It's hard to believe a story like that, but Tolga brought another honey with such a quality.  One spoon was healthy for you.  Two spoons would put you in the hospital.   That honey is currently sitting on some top shelf in our Kusadasi home, probably to be forgotten about until someone decide to take it down and unwittingly test it out...

Our honey of choice, and cure-all, has been chestnut honey.  It seems for about $50 for 2 pounds.  That's some honey!  I never imagined paying that much for honey.

We give the kids spoonfuls of honey when they are sick.  Tomris now asks for it,

"(fake coughing) I'm sick."

"Oh, do you need some honey?"

Big wide blue eyes, innocent nod, and one more cough for good measure.